Highly researched and footnoted, this is not an emotional book but a journalistic explanation of the religion, the founder, the controversies, and fairly current activities. ( )

This is a scathing, but scholarly "biography" of Christian Science. Detailed in the extreme, the book covers the religion's strange, histrionic, attention-seeking quack of a founder, Mary Baker Eddy, as well as the larger development of the movement. Author Caroline Fraser grew up in a mixed Christian Science home: her father was a member; her mother was not. In her late teens, with her rational faculties growing, Fraser left the church. Her break was more or less complete when a young boy, a member of the Mercer Island Scientist community, died of a ruptured appendix. His mother had brought in a "practitioner" to pray over her febrile, vomiting son, rather than taking him to the hospital for surgery. When he died, his mother and the practitioner continued to pray, hoping to resurrect him, only phoning the funeral home when his body began to decay.

I hope to return to Fraser's book one day. It was due back at the library before I could work my way through its many pages. Interestingly, Fraser connects Christian Science to many "thinkers" (can we call them that?) in the New Age movement, including Deepak Chopra, Bernie Siegel, and Louise Hay. The idea that one's mind or one's less-than-optimistic thoughts have something to do with one's receiving a diagnosis of cancer or autoimmune disease plagues many. I recall having a discussion about this notion (of defective thinking somehow being responsible for disease) with my sister when we were in our teens. We had recently lost two lovely dogs to cancer. Who could have had a more cheerful, optimistic, and forgiving nature than those two? my sister pointed out to me. They enjoyed their days and lived them with no apparent tendencies toward imperfect thought. Blaming illness on attitude is simplistic, dangerous (black-) magical thinking.

Heavy though Fraser's book is, it is a worthy and accessible one that links the tenets of this belief system with the wider society it grew out of. As I said, I hope I can return to it later when I've got a bit more time and reading stamina. ( )